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walk off, and never make any return of any kind in any manner, shape, or form to the city, and
then, subsequently, twenty-four hours later, fail, owing this and five hundred thousand dollars
more to the city treasury, or did he not? What are the facts in this case? What have the
witnesses testified to? What has George W. Stener testified to, Albert Stires, President Davison,
Mr. Cowperwood himself? What are the interesting, subtle facts in this case, anyhow?
Gentlemen, you have a very curious problem to decide."
He paused and gazed at the jury, adjusting his sleeves as he did so, and looking as though he
knew for certain that he was on the trail of a slippery, elusive criminal who was in a fair way to
foist himself upon an honorable and decent community and an honorable and innocent jury as
an honest man.
Then he continued:
"Now, gentlemen, what are the facts? You can see for yourselves exactly how this whole
situation has come about. You are sensible men. I don't need to tell you. Here are two men, one
elected treasurer of the city of Philadelphia, sworn to guard the interests of the city and to
manipulate its finances to the best advantage, and the other called in at a time of uncertain
financial cogitation to assist in unraveling a possibly difficult financial problem; and then you
have a case of a quiet, private financial understanding being reached, and of subsequent illegal
dealings in which one man who is shrewder, wiser, more versed in the subtle ways of Third
Street leads the other along over seemingly charming paths of fortunate investment into an
accidental but none the less criminal mire of failure and exposure and public calumny and what
not. And then they get to the place where the more vulnerable individual of the two--the man in
the most dangerous position, the city treasurer of Philadelphia, no less--can no longer
reasonably or, let us say, courageously, follow the other fellow; and then you have such a
spectacle as was described here this afternoon in the witness-chair by Mr. Stener--that is, you
have a vicious, greedy, unmerciful financial wolf standing over a cowering, unsophisticated
commercial lamb, and saying to him, his white, shiny teeth glittering all the while, 'If you don't
advance me the money I ask for--the three hundred thousand dollars I now demand--you will be
a convict, your children will be thrown in the street, you and your wife and your family will be in
poverty again, and there will be no one to turn a hand for you.' That is what Mr. Stener says Mr.
Cowperwood said to him. I, for my part, haven't a doubt in the world that he did. Mr. Steger, in
his very guarded references to his client, describes him as a nice, kind, gentlemanly agent, a
broker merely on whom was practically forced the use of five hundred thousand dollars at two
and a half per cent. when money was bringing from ten to fifteen per cent. in Third Street on call
loans, and even more. But I for one don't choose to believe it. The thing that strikes me as
strange in all of this is that if he was so nice and kind and gentle and remote--a mere hired and
therefore subservient agent--how is it that he could have gone to Mr. Stener's office two or three
days before the matter of this sixty-thousand-dollar check came up and say to him, as Mr.
Stener testifies under oath that he did say to him, 'If you don't give me three hundred thousand
dollars' worth more of the city's money at once, to-day, I will fail, and you will be a convict. You
will go to the penitentiary.'? That's what he said to him. 'I will fail and you will be a convict. They
can't touch me, but they will arrest you. I am an agent merely.' Does that sound like a nice, mild,
innocent, well-mannered agent, a hired broker, or doesn't it sound like a hard, defiant,
contemptuous master--a man in control and ready to rule and win by fair means or foul?
"Gentlemen, I hold no brief for George W. Stener. In my judgment he is as guilty as his smug co-
partner in crime--if not more so-- this oily financier who came smiling and in sheep's clothing,
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